Shattered!50 Years of Silence

History and Voicesof the Tragedy in Romania and Transnistria

Resistance in Romania and in Transnistria

The political circumstances in Romania and in
Transnistria made any significant physical
resistance extremely difficult. The
dehumanisation of the Jews by the anti-Jewish
legislation, pogroms, ghettoes, hostages,
deportations, and convoy marches -- all
contributed to a sense of helplessness. While
there were cases of active physical resistance,
for the most part resistance had to be
expressed in more subtle ways.

In Romania, at the time of the deportations,
local rabbis would walk at the head of the
convoys. Rather than carrying bundles with
their personal belongings, they carried Torah
Scrolls high above their heads, so that they
could be seen by all the people in the convoy.
The scrolls represented the hope and the faith
that eventually the people would be rescued.

Resistance was also expressed by lobbying and
petitioning authorities and by collecting goods
and money to help the deportees in
Transnistria.. Negotiations for the return of
orphans and other groups of deportees were
relentlessly pursued.

Transnistria was overrun by German soldiers,
Romanian gendarmes, Ukrainian militia, and
Volksdeutsche. Well dressed, well fed, and
well armed, they were viciously anti-Semitic.
The Jews, on the other hand, were starving,
dressed in tattered clothes and worn out foot
wear, they had no medical assistance, and lived
in inadequate shelters. They were herded from
one village to another, beaten and robbed, they
were in constant fear for their lives.
However, the fact that they had no weapons was
the most important factor, which precluded any
physical opposition against their barbaric
oppressors. Even Russian partisans were
relatively inactive in the area until 1943,
when the tide of the war changed.

Falling back on the century-long tradition of
Jewish community support systems, people with
leadership skills established rules, which
enabled the deportees to deal with the chaotic
conditions in the camps. When the Jewish
committees had been organized, they began to
provided assistance as customary in Jewish
tradition, first to the most needy --the
orphans, the widows, the sick, and the elderly.

Some time later, the deportees were able to
establish contacts with partisans, and
relationships of mutual aid began to develop.
Deportees who occasionally escaped from camps
found shelter amidst partisan groups, which
they later joined. In turn, some partisans
found shelter in the camps, where they were
able to use the identity cards of deportees who
had perished in order to hide their true
identity.

In the Bershad area, there was an active centre
of partisan activities. The chief of the group
was a local Ukrainian Jew, Iasa [Iasha] Talis.
On one of his missions, he was followed by
Romanian gendarmes. Fortunately, he was
rescued and hidden by deportees in the camp.
Some time later a funeral was staged and he was
smuggled out of the camp in a casket. Later,
Iasa Talis and his partisans sneaked into the
German labour camp at Mihailovka, east of the
River Bug, and killed the German camp commander
and two sentries. Then, they liberated the
Jewish "workers," and Iasa assisted them in
reaching Bershad.

Many young Jewish deportees participated in
acts of sabotage such as the mining of railway
tracks, and attacks on German and Romanian
military convoys in the Bershad area. The
leader of this group was a deportee from
Storozinets, Michael Schrentzel, the Vice-
President of the Jewish committee in the camp.
He also acted as a contact between the
deportees and the partisans. Unfortunately, the
local Gestapo uncovered the group. Thus, in
January and February 1944, 228 Jews, were shot.
Michail Schrentzel was cruelly tortured before
he was killed.

In November 1943, a similar incident occurred
in Balta. There, eighty-three Jews, who were
involved in various sabotage activities, were
caught and shot.

In Transnistria the mere act of surviving was
an act of resistance, a triumph of the human
spirit.

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